


A Vessel For Pain

by MK_Mouse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, But not yet uhhh, Eventual Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Harry Potter Has PTSD, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentor Severus Snape, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Severus Snape Lives, Suicidal Thoughts, You have to suffer first
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:46:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29097501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MK_Mouse/pseuds/MK_Mouse
Summary: "Everyone needs to lay blame. Perhaps that is his new prophecy, his new purpose. Perhaps he is condemned to a life of reminding everyone around him of what they have lost, of what he failed to protect. Perhaps he’d be better off gone."---Harry may have won the war, but his mind won't let him rest. He's fighting internal battles of unknown depths, and this time, he might not win.
Relationships: implied Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	A Vessel For Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: Suicidal Ideation and Intent.

His realisations are a long time coming, perhaps. To the outsider, Harry Potter tries exceedingly hard to look absolutely fine, but the way his chest heaves in the night with the weight of the past few years belays any of the easy pretences he puts up for his peers. They see a cheerful smile; the optimism he has had to carry with him for so many years that its bled insincerely into his clothes and his hair and his being. In reality, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

And he’s so very, _very_ tired.

More tired than he has any real right to be he supposes, thoughts speeding around his head each night as he twists the bedsheets between his fingers in a nervous sort of way. He’s still young, even if he doesn’t feel it. Shouldn’t that count for something? Prophecies aside, is suffering at the hands of his aunt and uncle should have prepared him better for this, shouldn’t it? He’d told himself for years that here he has a bed to sleep in, there is food on the table, his clothes are clean and fit him well. That should be enough. He has had the opportunity to better himself, to learn, to make something of himself, _to make his parents proud._ That should be _more_ than enough. He should be grateful for all that Hogwarts has offered him.

It was always the most honest place he could call home.

Yet he cannot rest here anymore, in these walls; steeping in his own history and the knowledge of all his failures. Instead, he’s spent these first few weeks of his eighth year awake, staring lamely into the darkness; twisting those sheets round and round between sweaty fingers and palms, and gently worrying at the little holes that appear there until the threads give way under his fingers and begin to shred before his very eyes.

***

His friends notice as the bags under his eyes sink into deeper shades of blackened blue, but after the sixth day, they learn to stop asking questions. They never come to bear any fruit; he’s too skilled in the art of a bland, pale smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Insincere, pacifying, plain. It doesn’t stop him seeing the worried glances that pass back and forth between them. Those worried glances that could so easily turn to looks of derision the second he turns his back.

They’ve all suffered greatly, and they’ve all grown from it. He knows that to be true. But sometimes he looks up to the top of the hall as he picks through his dinner in the candlelight, and he tries to make out the faces of the professors, and he wonders if they might understand this feeling he carries better, somehow. Like real adults do, or ought to; not like children that have been forced to grow old quickly in the face of a war.

Sometimes, his eyes will linger on Snape, alive against all odds and as constant a fixture as he ever was. He wonders if he might understand this feeling the best of all, from one _abandoned boy_ to another.

Someones idle laugh will draw him back to the present, and he’ll paste his thin smile back onto his face, pushing potato around with his fork for a little while longer, then go back to working on his assignments.

This is the way it is, this is the way it has to be.

***

Sometimes he stands and looks at himself in the mirror when the rest have disappeared to sleep, and he traces the marks with gentle fingers. They dance under his too-pale fingers, and he sees the ghosts of black eyes from years passed. Bruises by any other name, he muses to himself. These are the self inflicted wounds of his over active mind, of his fears, of his desire to stave off sleep in an attempt to avoid the terrors that plague him. This is fate though, isn’t it? This is his destiny, and it’s not going to change. Just because the war has been won, it doesn’t mean it has taken leave from his mind. And it doesn’t discredit all of those wars that rage inside of him that have barely even begun.

The knowledge of what he had to do, those expectations that were set upon him; they were always equal parts an elegant robe and a straight jacket, but most of all they were _something_. Now it is over, he has _nothing_. Just words in textbooks that pale in insignificance to lived experience, thoughts of a long and blanched future, and memories of those whose blood is drying on his hands.

He should have died. That he knows. He was ready to die, and he had schooled himself to die, and now he was cursed to live, again.

He doesn’t know himself now, gazing at the pale and plum hues of this gaunt reflection staring at him in the mirror. Who is he, without the weight of a prophecy to fulfil draped over his shoulders? Harry Potter is nothing more than a vessel for other people’s anger, he reasons. He has become an idol, and at his feet lay the offerings of other people’s injustices. He’s a beacon for the dark to target and he’ll become a beacon for the light to blame for their losses. He couldn’t protect them all, _Merlin,_ he couldn’t even protect those that were the closest to him.

Everyone needs to point a finger, he supposes. Everyone needs to lay blame. Perhaps there is no one better suited to that life than he. Perhaps that is his new prophecy, his new purpose. Perhaps he is condemned to a life of reminding everyone around him of what they have lost, of what he failed to protect. Perhaps he’d be better off gone.

That night, in the pale light of the eighth years common room, he decides that his body is a vessel for pain. It always has been; from beatings to blood quills to the countless times he’s been at the end of some dark wizard’s vexations. Yes, the body, his body, is a vessel for pain; his own pain, but more importantly, that of others. This is always as it has been, always as it should be. This is his new duty to fulfil. To fill himself with the pain of others, then purge himself from the landscape, so they can all rest, and move on.

He pads softly up to his room, gathers up the things he needs: his cloak, a quill, some spare scraps of paper. He moves softly from room to room, casting an eye over his friends. His eyes linger on the rise and fall of Draco’s chest, and he suppressed the bile that rises in his throat as he stops himself from reaching out to touch him. Instead, he sends a silent hope he sleeps well tonight, that they all sleep well tonight, and the rest of the nights to come.

He shrugs the cloak over his shoulders and melts into the room. Then, he heads for the astronomy tower.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fic in literally years, so apologies if I'm a little rusty! Kudos and comments appreciated <3


End file.
